Freeloader & F-Zero GX - UPDATED

GCN News | Good news, everyone! (Well those with Action Replay)

Online importing site NCSX was the first to experiment with Nintendo and Amusement Vision's futuristic racer to see if it is Freeloader friendly. While the game will run, you're going to have a hard time playing the thing.

The game's heads-up display and on-screen menu & options text disappear, severely harming the enjoyment of the game. It is still technically possible to play the thing though but is it really worth it? The answer is no.

Not long to wait though til the October ETA for both Europe and Australia.

---UPDATE---

It appears that Datel have found a work around for Action Replay owners.

If you enter the following code in:

(m)
1 GE0E-N57N-NG1QW
2 XWUF-2990-RMYFT
3 ETRW-XUTM-4KQ98
4 BU1R-MZAZ-Y68RA

You will be able to play the Japanese F-Zero GX with the HUD and menus fixed and in full display.

Work continues for a work around for the stand-alone Freeloader product.

Visit here for more information.

Related F-Zero GX Content

F-Zero GX Review
01 Nov, 2003 Blink and you'll miss it.

F-Zero GX Preview
11 Sep, 2003 We go hands on with the US retail version of this insanely fast and difficult racer.

Further F-Zero GX screens released.
22 Jun, 2003 Those nice chaps at Amusement Vision reveal yet more of what could yet be the best-looking game on the Cube - 21 new screens await.

7 Comments

Slasher

8 years ago

From what I remember reading, only the Japanese version was tested as the US version isnt released till next month. There might still be hope...not likely though.

mrcivic

8 years ago

This is the reason why people shouldn't have invested on the thing. It was never going to be 100% compatible with all games.

Slasher

8 years ago

but surely you would know when you bought a freeloader that it wont be 100% compatible with future releases. If you didn't realise this youre a damn fool.

red_war_machine

8 years ago

Slasher wrote

but surely you would know when you bought a freeloader that it wont be 100% compatible with future releases. If you didn't realise this youre a damn fool.

Call me stupid, but I still really don't understand WHY it can't be, if all it has to do is bypass the bootup check at the beginning.

How can all the cheat discs etc. work, and yet Freeloader doesn't? As far as I'm aware, both sets of discs work on the same principles?

Nightcrawler

8 years ago

oh why why didnt i born in Japan

Anonymous

8 years ago

mrcivic wrote

This is the reason why people shouldn't have invested on the thing. It was never going to be 100% compatible with all games.

It's not Nintendo or Sega trying to circumvent the freeloader:

http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3036&likref=alert&

Quote

Did Nintendo block importers by fighting the Freeloader intentionally?

Apparently not. As you will read below, this is more a technical problem, not even forecasted by the programmers probably, than a voluntary move. Usually, when console manufacturers or publishers have been fighting against imports in the past (valid for any console released), they made sure the game would not boot at all and instead you would face a black screen or a ‘No Import’ logo with a lot of Japanese text besides it…

What is technically happening?

Some titles nowadays are coded having in mind in advance that they will be translated for international releases later. In that case, the software, once booted on a machine, first checks which bios the machine is using (USA, PAL or JAP) and is then supposed to display a different batch of texts, depending on the location it found. People who have played the import version of Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox know what we are talking about: depending on which console you boot it, the Japanese game displays the menus and information tags in a different language.

Here it is basically the same, F-Zero GX is coded with internationalization in mind.

The only problem is the English and other languages have not been translated and inputted yet for this Japanese release of the software and will most probably be all implemented in the USA version, releasing next month.

During our intensive testing sessions and surfing on the numerous gaming forums online, we discovered that this was not a first time and that the Japanese RPG from Nintendo, Giftpia, was a precedent in the matter. It is even much worse in the case of Giftpia as the full game displays without text at all, during the complete adventure on both the PAL and USA GameCube consoles.

Still playable for the freaks (some of us play Final Fantasy in Japanese for years without understanding anything from the dialogs), if you want to enjoy F-Zero GX 100% as it was made, you should be careful and check the list of cases in which F-Zero GX works perfectly:

- GameCube Japanese Console
- GameCube USA modded to Japanese internally

In the meantime, Lik Sang has started working in coordination with several specialists around the world on an alternative solution for every Action Replay Cube user and interested buyer. Several of our closest partners are researching actively the right cheat-code which would force F-Zero GX to display the Japanese texts whichever version of the console it has recognized at first. We have been told the solution could take less than a week. If this would be confirmed, it might be a strong decisive factor to choose the Action Replay Cube over the Freeloader if you are planning to play import games without restrictions on the long term. Stay tuned for more information as it comes available…

Slasher

8 years ago

red_war_machine wrote

Slasher wrote

but surely you would know when you bought a freeloader that it wont be 100% compatible with future releases. If you didn't realise this youre a damn fool.

I don't work at Nintendo or Datel nor do I know the diferences between Freeloader & AR. But if all it does is bypass a bootup check called (for example) bootcheck.ngc, what happens when Nintendo change the bootup check files on the games to bootcheck2.ngc. Freeloader obviously wont know about it as it has been programmed to bypass bootcheck.ngc only. Whether the AR can be updated to overcome this or not I don't know.
Now with Nintendo dark at importers they might modify future releases to not boot with the freeloader product. Who knows whether 3rd party games will try to stop freeloader, maybe - maybe not.

Just seems common sense to me that there could be problems in the future. Of coure the AR has a higher rate of probable sucess with future releases as there might be codes that can be added to change the way it work. Again, we'll just have to wait.

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F-Zero GX

Pre-order or buy:
PALGN recommends: www.Play-Asia.com

Australian Release Date:
  Out Now
European Release Date:
  Out Now
Publisher:
  Nintendo
Developer:
  Amusement Vision
Players:
  1-4
Memory Blocks:
  22 blocks

Extra:
60 Hz
Dolby Pro Logic II
Widescreen
Vibration

Read more...

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F-Zero GX Review